Need An Electrical Service? Signs Of Faulty Electrical Wiring In Your Home | Hurst, TX

When it comes to electrical issues at your Hurst, TX home, most homeowners are smart enough to know that this isn’t the kind of project you should try to do on your own. It’s a rare homeowner who would even think twice about hiring an electrical service when there’s a serious problem with the wiring in the home.

But recognizing when you really need an electrical service isn’t always easy, because electrical wiring issues aren’t always evident to the average person. To figure out when you need to call for assistance, you need to use both your senses and your common sense. Here are a few things to look for that say you need to call a reliable electrician right away!

Warm Wall Outlets

Your appliances might be affected by temperature over time, but the outlets at your home shouldn’t be. It’s common for an appliance to become overheated if it’s plugged in for too long because it’s generating power into a confined space, but if your outlet is doing the same thing, you’ve got a real problem on your hands.

That’s because your outlet is not designed to overheat, and if it does, it means that your electrical wiring is likely the culprit. At a minimum, a warm or hot outlet needs to be replaced, because a hot outlet could cause an electrical fire inside your walls. In a best-case scenario, your circuit breaker will trip before it can cause a fire, but if your wiring is loose, it’s likely that the circuit breaker won’t actually be activated when the outlet starts to heat up.

If the circuit breaker doesn’t trip, you could have a major fire on your hands in rather short order. This isn’t worth risking; as soon as your outlet feels warm to the touch, you need to get your outlets replaced and call an electrical service to come to your home for repairs.

Flickering Lights

When most people see flickering lights at their Hurst, TX home, their first thought usually isn’t to call an electrician. Their first thought is usually to make a visit to their local hardware store, pick up some light bulbs and replace the flickering lights.

That’s sometimes a solution, but in many cases, flickering lights are actually a sign that you’ve got a problem with your wiring. When you plug in multiple appliances at the same place, you’re not supposed to see your lights flickering or hear them buzzing. If you do, that’s a sign that you’ve got to have someone take a hard look at the wiring, because something probably isn’t right with your outlet.

Whether you’re overloading that outlet with too many appliances or you’ve got an issue with your wiring, your home needs assistance from a professional electrical service, because at the minimum, you need to upgrade your wiring to carry the load. In a worst-case scenario, you’ll need to have your wiring replaced in order to keep the home well-lit and prevent safety issues.

Frayed Wiring

This is the most obvious sign that something is really wrong with your electrical wiring, because when your wiring is frayed, it becomes difficult to keep the electricity flowing to where it needs to go. More than that, it’s a safety hazard, because touching a live wire without proper protection can lead to electrocution, serious injury or worse.

Unfortunately, wiring can break as time goes on, and with rats, termites and other pests potentially invading your home, chewed wires can be every bit as dangerous as frayed wires. Luckily, these take no effort whatsoever to spot if they’re visible inside your home. Nor do they take any guesswork: you’ve got to call an electrical service to replace frayed wiring as soon as you see it. At a minimum, you’ve also got to make sure the wiring is safe from pets and children until an electrical expert can make the trip, because frayed wires are always a serious safety hazard.

Smoke Smells and Discolored Wires

When it comes to your electric wires and deciding whether you need to call an electrical service for your home, trusting three of your five senses is one of the best ways to get information. (Obviously, touching or tasting an electrical wire is always a very bad idea.)

We’ve touched on what you can see and hear, but smells can also be a sign that something is very wrong with your home’s wiring. If you notice a smoke smell near one of your appliances, that’s a sign that something’s up that an electrical service needs to fix, because the problem probably isn’t with your appliance. Smoke should never be ignored inside your home, and when the smoke is coming from near one of your outlets, you need to call for assistance at your first opportunity. The presence of smoke almost always means a fire is imminent, and an electrical fire can be a nightmare to extinguish once it gets going.

You’ll also want to make sure to take a good look at the wires coming from your outlet, because smoke discoloration is a certain sign that you’ve got an issue with your wiring. When the coating of your appliances’ wires have taken smoke damage, your first move should be to immediately pull your appliances from that outlet and contact a trusted electrical service to make repairs. The longer you leave a wire in an outlet that’s actively causing damage, the bigger the risk is to your home and its safety.

At Tioga Plumbing & Electric, we know that electrical wiring is something that always needs to be taken seriously, and we’re proud to put our knowledge and expertise to work to make repairs at your home. If you’ve spotted any of the signs that something might be wrong with the wiring in your home, it’s time to contact our electrical service for repairs. We’ll take a good look and ensure that any repairs are made with the utmost care!